::See curatorial statement below images::
Unsung.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
Ricochet.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
Once Removed.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancouver, BC
Reverence.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
Terrace.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
(3)hundred Yards.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
Sequester.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
Untitled.
24" x 36"
Mixed media
2007
SNAP Contemporary Art
Vancuver, BC
Neal Nolan and Eben Bender met in the middle of a run on sentence. They both had opinions to share. At that point 5 years ago, the two were involved with Vancouver's cadre of street artists, giving concrete an urban voice. They were trying to think outside the box to make what is in the box more interesting. In 2002 they joined together and opened Misanthropy, an alternative gallery space smudged into the downtown east side. From such lowly shacks the palace of culture is built. Eventually they closed the gallery. But there's always an event in effort. They had built something together and then they had let it go.
I mention all this shared history because it strikes me in looking at the eight assemblages in "Chronicle" that they first want you the viewer to feel the weight of the personal experience both present and past. For this show, Neal and Eben, dressed like coal, hopped frieght out of Vancouver and rode like vagabonds to Boston Bar. The constructed panels are evidence of that journey.
Or are they? Artists are always smart to frame the story their way. In "Chronicle", Neal and Eben have built a material world travelogue. Into these narrative panels they've included bits and larger bits, text and texture, so many solid things to better inform us of their experience. Even the word chronicle suggests a newspaperly recording of truth - art as fact. As Robert Rauschenberg once said:
"I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is. And I think a picture is more like the real world when it's made out of the real world."
As if it were that easy. Of course, Rauschenberg knew the game well. Everyone edits their experience. So in this way the work can be read as a storyboard, perhaps for some protosocialist documentary shot film-noir style, particularly if you consider Eben's brooding airbrush images. Indeed Eben's style has a photographic quality. You half expect to find Paul Strand poking around some of those weathered back roads shacks. There are art history references here as solid and connecting as a railway.
The video (self entitled) that accompanies this show was shot on the fly by Eben and Neal and a female chum, who traveled as Hedy Lamarr to their Bing and Bob. The movie suggests the trip was something of a madcap adventure. The editing was done by Joel Snowden with a stethoscope. He understands that the pulse of the film is the life of it. Like the panel assemblages, the video suggests a documentary, a herky jerky vision that is nonetheless true through and through. But look and listen close - art is telling its story here.
Written by: Barry "Charles" Dumka,
Snap Contemporary Art Gallery.
